Above the law

July 2, 2007

Well, c’mon now. Vice President Cheney — a man whose constitutional power is limited to a tie-breaking vote in the Senate and nothing else — feels that laws do not apply to him or his office, an office which they claim is either legislative or executive or both or neither depending on the circumstance; President Bush has for years now been signing bills into law and then claiming that because he is the one who signed it the law doesn’t apply to him. And now, he has commuted the sentence of “Scooter” Libby. I’m sure that Libby will next be presented with the Medal of Freedom.
We have an executive branch that has run wild, grabbing power wherever possible, keeping their every move secret, and defying the law at every turn.
So tell me this: why haven’t these men been impeached yet?
Oh, yeah. They didn’t have — or rather, get caught having — a sexual liaison.
How have we, the people, allowed this kind of thing? Why aren’t we taking to the streets?

Scooter Libby was convicted of a crime, insisting that it wasn’t against the law doesn’t make it so.
I concede your argument about Clinton’s trespass. However, you’re wrong on another point: it was NOT PROVEN. That’s the exact verdict of the impeachment trial, in those very words. Doesn’t mean he didn’t do it, of course.
Yes, Bush is within his power to commute the sentence. My point is that there is a continued pattern of “the law doesn’t apply to me” and Libby’s special treatment is more evidence of it.
But do you really think that after all Bush and Cheney have done to erode the constitution and overstep the bounds of their power, that a simple perjury would do them in? Just like Clinton; the mere fact that they haven’t been convicted of something doesn’t mean they’re not guilty.
The New York Times — of course, too liberal for right-wingers who don’t like to hear opposing viewpoints — sums it up quite well:
“Presidents have the power to grant clemency and pardons. But in this case, Mr. Bush did not sound like a leader making tough decisions about justice. He sounded like a man worried about what a former loyalist might say when actually staring into a prison cell.”

Two things I hate:
1) G.W.
2) Conservatives who bring up Clinton indiscretions eight years after the fact as if ol’ Bill is supposed to be some sort of litmus test of how a president should act.
However, being the proud moderate, I’d have to break rule #2 and ask if ANYONE bitching about this even remotely remembers the sicking pardons Clinton gave out during his final days? Why isn’t the New York Times (a.k.a. the FoxNews of the left) bringing that up to Hillary (who had every bit to do with it)?
Where were the “Above the Law” posts that day?

Oh, Kirk — maybe it’s my liberal perception, but I seem to recall that the right-wing bloviators had a FIELD DAY over Clinton’s pardons back then; right around the time when they were also fabricating ridiculous stories of “vandalism” at the White House, things like the removal of the “W” keys from computers and the like… which turned out to be completely false.
Funny, I DON’T remember them retracting their stories, though.

Actually, Clinton was *not* convicted of perjury before a federal grand jury, the way Libby was. He committed a crime and Bush has allowed him to escape the consequences of it. A pardon, or a commutation as it is in this case, is within the constitutional rights of the President, and thus not impeachable. But the message is that he’s soft on crime, especially if it’s at his behest or in service of his political ends. The remedy for such breathtaking corruption isn’t impeachment, it’s revolution.

I don’t remember, but I’m sure there were some who weren’t okay with it. Me, for example. But don’t forget that Clinton left office with an huge approval rating — more than 60% — so he had one thing in common with Bush, whose approval ratings are half that: he had nothing to lose by doing it.

Oh, Kirk. This is an argument used by a lot of conservatives — that they’ll stop using Clinton when we stop using Bush. There’s one BIG problem with that: Clinton left office more than SIX YEARS AGO. But Bush is STILL THERE and still causing new things to complain about.
Yes, it’s time to stop harping on Bill Clinton. But Bush? He’s still got two more years to affect our lives in negative, unknowable ways.

You may also like

Another example of the “Where were they six years ago?” gang: Lee Iacocca has come out with a book lambasting the Bush adminstration. Am I the only guy in this country who’s fed up with what’s[more...]

Here’s number 5,482 in the list of things that annoy me: spurious “caring.” I hate it when tragic events or circumstances are ingeniously transformed into marketable logos and products. It just[more...]